Today, user interfaces for hardware devices such as laptops, portable media players, as well as user interfaces for remote control devices and many other devices are challenged with achieving a sleek and desirable “look and feel” and industrial design while simultaneously addressing the growing requirements to take multiple types of hardware input—in order to interact with the increasingly powerful and complex software residing on these devices. Two common kinds of hardware input commonly deployed for user interfaces on computing devices, such as portable media players and remote control devices, include mechanical switches and touch sensitive sensors.
Mechanical switches, such as toggle switches, throw switches, dial switches, slide switches, etc. are termed “mechanical” because they have moving parts which engage or disengage electrical connection(s) to produce a desired result. Mechanical buttons provide a good example of mechanical switches used for input devices. As a common “on/off” scenario for a mechanical button, when the mechanical button is pressed and thus physically moved, a connection becomes engaged, producing a desired result such as “device on.” Then, when the button is released (or pressed again, or moved the other direction, etc.), the connection is disengaged, producing another desired result such as “device off.” In this regard, the device responds to the actuation of the mechanical switches according to predetermined functionality assigned to the mechanical switches. Mechanical switches also have tactile benefits because their actuation is perceptible to the sense of touch, i.e., there is tangible (mechanical) feedback to a user that actuation has occurred.
Another kind of input includes touch sensitive user interfaces that operate in response to sensors that detect touch by the user. For instance, capacitive touch pads are an example of a touch sensitive user interface that operate by sensing capacitance between sensors, in this case, measuring the capacitance of a user's finger (more accurately, the user's whole arm) in contact with the touchpad. Typically, capacitive sensors are laid out along horizontal and vertical axes of the touchpad and the location of the user's finger is determined from the capacitance measured by the capacitive sensors.
Some touchpads also have “hotspots,” which are locations on the touchpad that indicate user intentions other than some primary functionality. For example, on certain touchpads, moving one's finger along the right edge of the touch pad will control the scrollbar and vertically scroll the current window. Similarly, moving the finger on the bottom of the touchpad can scroll a window in the horizontal direction. Some touchpads can also emulate multiple mouse buttons by either tapping in a special corner of the pad, or by tapping with two or more fingers.
Today, touchpads are primarily found in portable laptop computers, because alternative mouse devices require a flat table adjacent to use of the device. Touchpads can be advantageous because short finger movements can be used to move the cursor adequately across the display screen, i.e., some users prefer the compact movement to the movement of a mouse device.
Some applications come ready with their own software or hardware user interfaces. For instance, application software for a PC may traditionally take mouse and keyboard input, which is standard for software on a PC platform. However, there is no standard hardware user interface that can replace such input as part of a 10 foot living room experience, as a remote control, for instance. For example, as the TV and PC continue to converge, it would be desirable to have an alternative input to the PC that is a de facto industry standard across devices with which users will be familiar, because it is employable for everything from kitchen appliances, to media players, to consumer electronics. Thus, there is a need for a standard, or universal, method for controlling user interfaces via a hardware input device with which users can immediately identify.
Given that such standard hardware input would be designed for users and applications of all types, it would be desirable to provide a standard input device that is simple, approachable and forgiving for users at all levels. Moreover, such standard hardware input should enable the user to navigate collections of media and execute transport controls with a single hand, regardless of the device or service serving up the media being rendered. With a standard hardware input set of core controls, it would be further desirable to enable blind control at least for volume, play/pause, next/fast forward and previous/rewind, optionally enabling one finger (e.g., the thumb) input. It would be still further desirable for such device to support circular input for scrolling vertical lists, while also enabling “surprise” additional functionality that are optional, but can be used for specialized functionality for the underlying device or application being controlled. Finally, it would be desirable to enable opportunities for customization and personalization of such hardware input device, by allowing for substitutable input layers so that the hardware input device can be customized for a user's preferences or for the underlying tasks to be performed.